NFB-Newsline®

In 1995, Dr. Kenneth Jernigan, one of the great leaders of the National Federation of the Blind, brought a long-standing dream to fruition. For years, he and others had been trying to find a solution to the problem of blind people having complete and total access to local and national newspapers. Up until this point, blind people had relied on readers and radio reading Services to communicate the printed word to them. Now, they would have full and selective access to the entire text of the newspaper, without editorial comment. Dr. Jernigan's dream had become reality, and this reality is NFB-Newsline®.

NFB-Newsline® can be accessed by any blind person, using only their standard touch tone telephone. It allows readers to enjoy the full newspaper through the use of a realistic sounding computer synthesized voice. NFB-Newsline® is a constant service, so the reader can access it whenever they wish. The reader can use the buttons on their phone to search through articles in the paper, or they can move through a particular article by sentence or paragraph. They can also take advantage of spelling and search features. The reader can speed up the reading voice, slow it down, or change the sound of the voice to his or her liking.

Currently, NFB-Newsline® carries over 250 local and national newspapers, including the Washington Post, USA Today, the Denver Post and many more. The Nebraska NFB-Newsline® center currently carries the Omaha World Herald, The Lincoln Journal Star, the Grand Island Independent and we are pleased to announce the recent addition of the Kearney Hub to our lineup. We are always in communication with other perspective newspapers around the state.

Also available on NFB-Newsline® are THE NEW YORKER, THE ECONOMIST, AARP the MAGAZINE, and DIABETES SELF-MANAGEMENT. As well as several publications dealing with Arts and culture and national and international news. But that’s not all! TV listings powered by Zap2it can also be accessed by calling NFB-Newsline®.

Readers are also able to keep up on the happenings in the blindness community via the Nebraska Information Channel, where they can read bulletins from the NFB of Nebraska, the Nebraska Commission for the Blind and other organizations representing the blind.

NFB-Newsline® is a free service to any subscriber, as long as they are blind or visually impaired, or otherwise unable to read the printed word. If you would like more information on how to become a subscriber to NFB-Newsline®, please Contact:

Kimberly Scherbarth
NFB-Newsline® Outreach Coordinator
4600 Valley Road, Suite 100
Lincoln, NE 68510-4844
Phone: (402) 471-8102
Fax: (402) 471-3009

EMail: newsline@ne.nfb.org